Perhaps one of the most overlooked privileges is not wealth itself, but having enough margin in your life to respond to reality. Over the last few years, we have become fluent in the language of privilege, speaking easily about financial privilege, pretty privilege, racial privilege, passport privilege, educational privilege and social privilege, and in doing so we have become increasingly aware that people do not all start from the same place and that some doors open more easily for some than for others. Yet there is one form of privilege that seems to receive far less attention, and that is the privilege of being able to do something with the information you have, not simply knowing, but acting, because the truth is that information alone changes very little. We like to imagine that if people only knew better, they would do better, and entire industries are built around this assumption, from self-help books and documentaries to podcasts, awareness campaigns, public health initiative...
Most of us are performing. Not just online — but in our clothes, our conversations, our spending, our silence. We perform for our families, our neighbors, our peers. We perform for strangers on Instagram and for classmates we haven’t spoken to in years. We perform to say, “I made it,” even when we haven’t. We perform to hide the hustle, the loans, the grief, the shame. In Kenya, to look like you’re struggling is often worse than to actually struggle. So we signal. With shoes, with weddings, with cars, with captions. Because dignity — here — is something you must display to be allowed to keep. We borrowed the car, we leased the house, Took the loan, wore the lace, smiled for the photos. Just to whisper to the world — I am not the struggle I came from. When Dignity Must Be Displayed In Kenya, poverty is more than economic — it is a social stigma, a public shame. Many of us are not just trying to escape hardship, we are trying to escape the look of it. In a society where ...